PHILOSOPHIES OF COLOUR: GENDER AND ACCULTURATION

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My hypothesis is that 'Colour' as idea acts as a dynamic in the production of
meaning and as such is part of what Le Doeuff (1991: 46-49) argues are deeply held
epistemes that structure and govern our ways of thinking. I have dealt with the
difficulties attendant on the analysis of a phenomenon as insubstantial as colour (as
idea and as precept) by assuming Goethe's (1810: 305-323) concept of the
enrobement of colour to objects without also attaching Goethe's theoretical
hypothesis of moral associations to colour. Thus I combine four different
methodologies to broadly related areas and cloak each in colour: the long cultural
historical view, the statistical, a case study and an applied art historical comparison.
In the first part I have constructed an alternative vision of the development of colour
theory from Plato to now, its philosophical, psychological and mythological
construction and the consequent framing of women as colour. I discuss how a
constructed hierarchy of chromatic value has informed perceptions of gender,
arguing that authoritative epistemologies such as colour theory have established
fallacious belief systems of chromatic value that reinforce cultural perceptions of
gender. In the second I have conducted a three-year perceptual psychology
experiment designed to reveal the extent of stereotyped chromatic perceptions of
gender in visual arts students at two institutions of Higher Education. The data and
results are statistically analysed and the evidence of acculturated chromatic
perception is discussed in relation to universal culturally patterned belief systems of
chroma and gender. Thirdly I have taken 'yellow' as an epistemological and
historical study that proposes and explores an underlying determined semiotic
chroma that ensures normalising belief systems survive material and social change. I
deconstruct some of the theological mythologising structures and meanings of
'Yellow' and discuss the implications for art history of racism and the recuperation
of feminised colour as an adjunct of the phallus. Finally I discuss two women artists,
Sonia Delaunay and Bridget Riley and the implications of the word 'colourist' for
them as women in art practice. I argue that the general unconscious assumption is
that colour originates in emotion instinct and ethnicity and equates women with
colour at the level of the imaginary insisting that success for women artists is
incumbent upon their colour being confined in a phallic symbolic framework of
masculinity. I evidence how acculturated perceptions of 'woman' as colour
naturalises and ensures the continuation and institutionalisation of cultural and
social systems.

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File version is made available in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite only the published version using the details provided on the item record or file.
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